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Key points
- Expressing gratitude helps bind people together and enhances our social and emotional well-being.
- Gratitude interventions for students have boosted positive affect, focus, motivation, resiliency, and life satisfaction.
- When prompted, students often express gratitude for the faculty, staff, family, and friends who help support them through school.
“I want to thank you, show my gratitude / My love, and my respect for you, I want to thank you / Oh, I want to thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you” —Natalie Merchant, “Kind & Generous”
I recently ran the Detroit Marathon, and in conjunction, I raised money for the Detroit Community Cat Rescue. The day after the race, I wrote thank-you notes to everyone who donated. I knew my mom would love it, but I felt a little strange writing to guys from my basketball league. I had already revealed a little more of myself than typical by soliciting donations for my favorite people—kittens—and I worried that handwritten thank-yous would be another violation of masculine norms.
I was so wrong. Expressing gratitude to my friends and teammates, not only for their donations but also for their camaraderie, struck a chord. In fact, research on gratitude tells us that everyone, just like I had, overestimates how awkward giving thanks will be and underestimates the surprise and positive effect it will bring to others. Now I feel more bonded with those guys than ever before.
The psychological benefits of gratitude
As we approach the end of the year, a time when many people give thanks for the good things in their lives, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to write about gratitude. Gratitude is when we acknowledge another person who intentionally, altruistically, and at some cost gives us something of personal value. After the marathon, I was grateful to my friends and family for both the tangible benefit of money, but also the intangible social support that their donations represented.
Gratitude, however, is more than rote politeness or a calculated strategy to keep the gifts coming. Being grateful is linked to higher levels of life satisfaction, optimism, vitality, helpfulness, empathy, forgiveness, and positive affect. Gratefulness broadens our perspective on life, allowing us to be more creative and insightful. Gratitude also reduces feelings of envy, negativity, depression, and anxiety. Some have argued that gratitude is central to our relationships with other people and to the human experience as a whole.
Gratitude interventions
A Christmas Carol is a story, essentially, about Scrooge turning from an ungrateful to a grateful person. Dickens was right that gratitude can be learned, although most of us would choose not to be visited by ghosts all night long. Fortunately, psychologists have devised several ways to teach young people to be more grateful and prompt adults to express gratitude. These practices include gratitude journaling (another form of expressive writing), gratitude letters, starting gratitude conversations, or simply and intentionally adopting a grateful mindset every day.
In one study, over 200 urban high school students used GiveThx, which provided users a space for gratitude journaling and privately thanking other students on the app. Compared to the control group, GiveThx users reported being more grateful and having a more positive affect, less negative affect and anxiety, and more satisfaction with both their friendships and life 6sixweeks later. They also expressed higher scores across several measures of socioemotional learning, including emotion regulation, altruism, and achievement motivation.
Another study used texting to encourage college students to be grateful. Over 7sevenweeks, students were texted weekly reminders to choose a grateful attitude, express thanks to their peers or professors (major oversight to not include other college support staff!), and reflect on three to five blessings from the past week. Students who practiced gratitude reported being calmer, less stressed, more focused on learning, and more motivated and resilient in the face of academic challenges.
Encouraging gratitude from students
These studies demonstrate two important things about gratitude. First, students can benefit from practicing gratitude year-round, not just during a particular season. Second, technology is a great way to encourage students to give thanks and share those sentiments. In my work at Persistence Plus, we regularly nudge students to express gratitude for those who help them get through school.
- “The academic advisors, they’ve helped plan my schedule and helped educate me on my education goals.”
- “Professor Maggie and my advisor. When the going seemed too difficult, they wouldn’t let me quit.”
- “…my Detroit Promise Coach….He has helped me make good decisions about school and my life and how to balance everything well together.”
We often hear how grateful students are to faculty and staff who support them during tough times. Even though advising is part of their jobs, students readily acknowledge that the time and effort put in by so many go beyond expectations. Students also express gratitude for family members who make going to college possible:
- “My dad driving me to school when I can’t physically walk there myself due to my broken foot.”
- “My kids are very understanding when I am studying, which is always.”
- “My husband for helping out around the house while I study—so grateful.”
And just as I was so grateful to my friends who supported me during the marathon, many students give thanks to their friends who support them in persisting in school:
- “I’m grateful for my friends Maddie and Kiley right now.”
- “My boyfriend for being here for me and listening to me every day.”
- “Right now, I am grateful for my cat.”
And gratefulness doesn’t end with students! We’ve also nudged gratitude practice to faculty and staff on our platform, and they’ve given thanks to those who have supported them in their career.
- “Thanks for giving me the opportunity to be a leader and to develop useful and interesting materials.”
- “Thank you for the space to learn and grow, plus the patience and understanding for me to process.”
- “She has been an amazing friend and colleague all the years I have known her.”
Sharing gratitude
If you’re looking to enhance focus, resilience, and positive affect this semester, gratitude would be a great place to start. And that can begin with you. Tell the people you work with (including students) why you’re grateful for them. Once your perspective is broadened, you can prompt students to practice gratitude through journals, letters, conversations, text messages, or social media. Assure them that giving thanks will be less awkward than it seems in their heads and that people are going to love knowing the impact they’ve had on their college careers and their lives.
References
Bono, G., Mangan, S., Fauteux, M., & Sender, J. (2020). A new approach to gratitude interventions in high schools that supports student wellbeing. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(5), 657-665.
Froh, J. J., Bono, G., Fan, J., Emmons, R. A., Henderson, K….Wood, A. M. (2014). Nice thinking! An educational intervention that teaches children to think gratefully. School Psychology Review, 43(2), 132-152.
Wilson, J. T. (2016). Brightening the mind: The impact of practicing gratitude on focus and resilience in learning. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 16(4), 1-13.
